Meg Hibbert
Meg Hibbert held the position of editor of the Salem Times-Register and The New Castle Record from July 1999 - July 2014. She won more than two dozen awards from the Virginia Press Association for feature writing, columns, business articles, health and environmental writing and education coverage. She and her husband, Bill, live in Salem and are avid University of Georgia Bulldogs.

Glenvar Library will be razed and relocated during construction

GLENVAR – By the winter of 2013, the cramped and outdated Glenvar Branch Library should be settled into its spacious new home with room for many more books, videos and recordings and magazines.

But first, it will squeeze into temporary quarters at 2630 W. Main St. and the building people see today will be torn down.

The Glenvar Branch library, as it looks now, is scheduled to be torn down by September to make way for construction of the new library. Photo by Meg Hibbert

In the temporary location, “Services will be a bit more limited but we will still be able to offer some children’s programs, popular books, DVDs and other materials for Internet access,” explained Diana L. Rosapepe, director of library services for Roanoke County Public Library.

Plans for the new library were developed after a series of three community meetings, the last of which was April 20.

She said the Glenvar library expects to vacate the current building by early September, and the building will be torn down to clear the site for construction that is scheduled to begin late this year.

Glenvar library patrons got glimpses of what the new building will look like last week when architects and library representatives displayed them and answered questions at the community meeting.

Rosapepe said the plans, notes and suggestions from the series of meetings would be posted on the Roanoke County website soon.

The new library would have a place to sit and read or enjoy the views in a room where the adult nonfiction collection would be housed. There will be separate areas for teen and children’s books and recordings.

There will also be an outdoor patio.

The entire Glenvar library project is budgeted at $5.76-million, which includes grading and more than only the building.

On the site plan, the current building would be where the new parking lot shows, close to the new front entrance of the library off the road in front of the Joseph C. Thomas Center at Richfield Retirement Community. Now the building and parking lot are off Daugherty Road, the road that runs next to the Fort Lewis Fire Department.

Estimated completion date is between December 2012 and February 2013, “depending on the weather,” Rosapepe said. She explained the schedule calls for a 12-month construction period, “with a small margin for the unforeseen.”

The Glenvar Branch library that now includes 51,395 books, DVDs, magazines and other items has been limited for years by lack of space, Rosapepe conceded, “so will be filling in some areas prior to the opening of the new library. The exact number hasn’t been determined but it will be done at an accelerated rate.”

She added there will probably be a farewell or ceremony of some sort before the old building is demolished.

Rosapepe praised the people from the Glenvar community for how involved they were in expressing their desires for the library in the future.

“It was really encouraging to see how much support there was for this library and how invested people are in the design process. They seemed to be genuinely involved throughout and had a lot of good ideas, most of which found their way into the final concept,” she said.